Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner on Thursday defended the actions of the police officers who ordered nine men -- including eight University of Colorado football players -- out of their cars at gunpoint after receiving reports they had been waving a gun at each other in traffic early Saturday morning.

"Absolutely," Beckner said, when asked if the response was appropriate, even though the gun in question turned out to be an Airsoft pellet gun. "They had a report from a citizen witness who saw someone in the vehicle waving around a gun and pointing it at other people.

"I don't know how else they could have responded."

Eight Boulder police officers and two sergeants pulled over two vehicles near Canyon Boulevard and Broadway around 2 a.m. Saturday after a witness said a passenger in one of the vehicles was waving a gun at the other car.

In a video recorded on a mounted dashboard camera in one of the police vehicles, officers can be seen surrounding one of the cars at gunpoint before searching it. They found the Airsoft gun, which police said was labeled as and had the appearance of an authentic Walther P99, a semi-automatic pistol.

With bar closing time approaching and patrons about to flood the streets near the incident, Beckner said the size and manner of the police response was necessary.

"You can't play games and can't make mistakes when dealing with that kind of situation," he said. "A mistake could be deadly."

Beckner said that while the recent rash of high profile shootings in Aurora and Wisconsin certainly have heightened awareness regarding guns, he said the response would have been no different if Saturday's incident had occurred before those tragedies.

A scene from a Boulder police dashboard camera showing officers responding to a report of a gun in a car early Saturday. Two cars were pulled over carrying a total of eight CU football players. Police discovered the gun was an Airsoft pellet gun. (Boulder Police Department)

"When a serious incident like Aurora happens it raises awareness, but our officers would have responded this way anyway," he said. "That's a serious allegation, regardless of what has happened nationally around that time."

Officers did not issue any tickets or make any arrests in the case, and the pellet gun was returned, which Beckner also said was the correct thing to do.

"It did end up to be a toy, the people involved all knew each other, they knew it wasn't a real gun, so it's not felony menacing," Beckner said. "You really had nothing to charge."

Boulder police did talk to the CU Athletic Department about the impact the athletes' behavior "had on police services throughout the entire city at the time of the incident."

"Any time you tie up eight officers on a call, it's going to have an impact on our ability to respond to other calls in the city," Beckner said. "Also, we didn't exactly get immediate cooperation, so that tied up the officers even longer than they would have otherwise been."

According to the police report, Thornton in particular was verbally antagonistic with officers, saying "Go ahead! Shoot me, mother (expletive)," "I can go wherever the (expletive) I want," and, "This is Boulder and you have your guns out?"

Beckner said officers could have chosen to ticket the men on obstruction charges if they had continued to be uncooperative with officers, but he felt they handled the situation well.

"I think the officers acted appropriately and used appropriate discretion."

On Wednesday, head football coach Jon Embree praised the way Boulder police responded to the call. He suspended Thornton and Thomas for the first two games of the season and announced that Clark has left the program.

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